Bill Cosby Told Jon Stewart To Cool It With All The Filth Flarn Filth

Bill Cosby appeared on The Daily Show last night to promote his new special, Far From Finished. While the whole interview — both parts of which are posted below — was lighthearted and fun, Cosby did carve out a minute or two up front to let Jon Stewart know that he wasn’t particularly happy about all the foul language the latter used in a standup performance at a recent benefit the two attended. “What you have you to understand, Jonathan … from whenst I cometh, when people cursed, the next thing that was gonna happen was somebody was gonna hit you,” Cosby said. “See, now there’s a whole new culture. People curse and they laugh. But for me, when you were cursing, I started crying.”

For any of you who want to file this under “An elder statesman of comedy has had it with these damn kids of today,” as Cosby seems to want to do with the phrase “See, now there’s a whole new culture,” allow me to direct your attention to this clip from Eddie Murphy’s standup special, Raw, which came out over 25 years ago. (NSFW audio, obviously.)

I adore Bill Cosby and he’s truly one of the top 5 comedians of all time.

But more people need to tell him to shut the fuck up when he starts blowing hard on social bullshit. Maybe then he would actually evolve his prehistoric views on things like swearing and black people using the n word.

I don’t really give a shit if black people use the word more or less. It’s not my place to care. And while this might not be a popular opinion for a white guy to have, I don’t think black people that are uncomfortable using the word should sling mud at those that do feel comfortable with it.

And people don’t need to swear more. Basically everyone swears all the time these days and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just where our language and culture has evolved to. That’s my point. They’re just words (the swearing, not the racial slurs) and Bill Cosby looks like an incredibly outdated uptight buffoon when he says some of that shit.

And you know what? So do you. Anyone who says “there’s a place for cursing in comedy and it can be very funny” sounds like a Rick Santorum type of asshole.

Maybe I should know better than to debate social eloquence with someone named “dissident”, but there is this sense of loss of decency now in comedy and really many other forms of entertainment that swearing is the thing to do. Toilet humor, dick jokes, bodily fluid jokes, and harsh language for the sake of shock value and “street cred” really strains the idea that this is some sort of “evolution”, but rather de-evolution of entertainment and society as a whole.
Hey, I like a good fart joke, but the last thing I need to hear is about some jackanape telling me his bowel movement or how many times he ejaculated on a hooker for the sake of a laugh.

I’m honestly surprised by the reaction to my post. I figured I was just voicing common sense, especially for the demographic of this site.

I mean, who the fuck is reading this site that still gives a shit about “decency” in comedy? Don’t you know where you are and the type of things this place covers?

There are clean comedians who are great and there are clean comedians who are hacky, the same goes for comedians who work “blue”. Swearing has absolutely nothing to do with it. Also, Katt Williams was a decent comedian at one point in time.

@Bloody Lethal – that’s not what I said at all. racial slurs don’t “offend” me. I’m a white dude, throw “nigger” at me all you want and it won’t affect me. All I meant by that was – and this should be common sense – is that racial slurs have far more power than innocuous curse words like “fuck” “shit” etc. swear words aren’t aimed at entire ethnic groups, they’re just intensifiers and are becoming more and more accepted as just common uses of speech. If you think “fuck” and “faggot” are on equal offensive grounds then I don’t know what to tell you. You’re far too deluded to reason with.

Whether a comedian swears or not has a lot to do with how funny they are. Some of it is just how good of a comedian they are. I don’t think we’d even know Dane Cook’s name if he didn’t swear (and was “edgy”). But I don’t think Jim Gaffigan’s act would work if he swore (he even commented once that working blue doesn’t go with jokes about Hot Pockets). But I totally disagree that swearing has nothing to do with being funny. That Eddie Murphy bit above would not be as funny if he wasn’t cursing his head off. But as he did it, it was funny.

It’s like the difference in “shut up” and “shut the fuck up”. Curse words are not just words. Vulgarity has a different effect.

I was in a flea market a couple of weeks ago and saw an album called Bill Cosby Talks to Kids About Drugs. I had to buy it based on that title alone. It wasn’t a comedy album, but boy was it hilarious.

At Temple there’s a thing for all the new freshman called Cosby 101. My year he came out in sweatpants and made it clear we were not to call him, “Bill” but “Dr. Cosby”. Paradoxically, he looked OLDER then than he did last night. But the man is a treasure.

Congrats to Jon Stewart who has been accepted into the “Filthy Still” Club (Rev. 22:11) but who has also won a “Get Out Free” ticket offered 24/7 by Big J that’s good during only one lifetime (length of lifetime not guaranteed)! If you know of any other potty mouths or evil doers who would be good Hell-minded members of the Club, please send us their names.